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THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIER 

HIS MOTIVES AND AIMS 



AN ORATION 



BY 



RANDOLPH H. McKIM, D. D., LL D. 



The Motives and Aims 



OF 



The Soldiers of the South 
in the civil war 



ORATION 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNITED CONFEDERATE VETERANS 

AT THEIR FOURTEENTH ANNUAL REUNION AT 

NASHVILLE, TENN., JUNE 14, 1904 



RANDOLPH HARRISON McKlM, D. D., LL. D. 

Kector of the Church of the Epiphany, WASHtNGTON, D. C. 



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KM (f)i\o(ro(f)rj(rei ^ouXo/Aei/os ay.a. re rrj'; avTOv Stai/om? /cat t^? CKeCvwv 
dpeTrj<; p.vrjix.eiov et's airavTa tov ^poyov KaTaXnreiv. 

— /soaa/cs 



Published by Order of the United Confederate Veterans 



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ORATION. 



IvADiES AND Gentlemen, 

Comrades and Feleow-Citizens : 

It is with deep emotion that I rise to address you to-day. When 
I look over this vast concourse of the brave men and the noble 
women of the South — representing every one of the eleven sov- 
ereign States once associated in the Southern Confederacy — 
and when I look into the faces of the veteran survivors of 
that incomparable army that fought with such magnificent valor 
and constancy for four long years under those tattered battle 
flags, now furled forever, I am overwhelmed at once by the dig- 
nity and the difficulty of the task assigned me. There is such a 
vast disproportion between the powers which the occasion de- 
mands and those which I possess, that I should not dare to essay 
the task but for my confidence in your generosity and forbearance 
to a speaker who at least can say : " I too loved the L,ost Cause 
and marched and fought under the banner of the Southern Cross." 

There are two unique features which must arrest the attention 
of every observer of this scene to-daj'. The first is the fact that all 
this pageantry, all this enthusiasm, is a tribute to a lost cause. The 
second is the fact that we assemble under the victorious banner 
to pay our reverend homage to the conquered one. 

A stranger coming into our midst and observing our proceed- 
ings might suppose that we were met here to celebrate the founda- 
tion of a State, or to acclaim the triumph of armies, or to exult in 
the victory of a great cause. But no ! Nine and thirty j'ears ago our 
new republic sank to rise no more ; our armies were defeated ; our 
banner went down in blood ! What then ? Are we here to in- 
dulge in vain regrets, to lament over our defeat, or to conspire for 
the re-establishment of our fallen cause? No! The love and 
loyalty which we give to the L,ost Cause, and to the defeated ban- 
ner, is a demonstration of the deep hold that cause had upon the 
hearts of the Southern people, and of the absolute sincerity and 
the complete devotion with which they supported it ; but it is no 
evidence of unmanly and fruitless repining over defeat, nor of any 
lurking disloyalty to the Union, in which now, thank God, the 
Southern States have equal rights and privileges with all the other 
States of our broad land. We saw our banner go down with 
breaking hearts. When our idolized leader sheathed his sword 
at Appomattox the world grew dark to us. We felt as if the sun 
had set in blood to rise no more. It was as if the foundations of 
the earth were sinking beneath our feet. But that same stainless 
hero whom we had followed with unquestioning devotion, taught 
us not to despair. He told us it was the part of brave men to ac- 
cept defeat without repining. ' ' Human virtue, ' ' he said, ' ' should 
be equal to human calamity." He pointed upward to the star of 
duty, and bid us follow it as bravely in peace as we had followed 
it in war. Henceforth it should be our consecrated task, by the 
help of God, to rebuild the fallen walls of our prosperity. 



And so we accepted the result of the war in good faith. We 
abide the arbitrament of the sword. We subscribe as sincerely as 
the men who fought against us, to the sentiment ; " Ojie Flag, 
one Cojintry, one Constitution, one Destmyy This is now for us 
an indissoluble Union of indestructible States. We are loyal to 
that starry banner. We remember that it was baptized with 
Southern blood when our forefathers first unfurled it to the 
breeze. We remember that it was a Southern poet, Francis Key, 
who immortalized it in the " Star Spangled Banner." We remem- 
ber that it was the genius of a Southern soldier and statesman, 
George Washington, that finally established it in triumph. 
Southern blood has again flowed in itsdefen.se in the Spanish war, 
and should occasion require, we pledge our lives and our sacred 
honor to defend it against foreign aggression as bravely as will the 
descendants of the Puritans. And yet, to-day, while that banner 
of the Union floats over us, we bring the offering of our love and 
loyalty to the memory of the flag of the Southern confederacy ! 
Strange as it may seem to one who does not understand our people ; 
inconsistent and incomprehensible as it may appear, we salute yon- 
•der flag — the banner of the Stars and Stripes — as the symbol of our 
reunited country at the same moment that we come together to do 
homage to the memory of the Stars and Bars. There is in our hearts 
a double loyalty to-day ; a loyalty to the present, and a loyalty to the 
■dear, dead, past. We still love our old battle flag with the Southern 
cross upon its fiery folds ! We have wrapt it round our hearts ! 
We have enshrined it in the sacred ark of our love ; and we will 
honor it and cherish it evermore, — not now as a political symbol. 
but as the consecrated emblem of an heroic epoch ; as the sacred 
memento of a day that is dead ; as the embodiment of memories 
that will be tender and holy as long as life shall last. 

Let not our fellow countrymen of the North mistake the spirit 
of this great occasion. If Daniel Webster could say that the Bun- 
ker H'il monument was not erected "to perpetuate hostility to 
Great Britain," much more can we say that the monuments we 
have erected, and will yet erect, in our Southland to the memory 
of our dead heroes, are not intended to perpetuate the angry pas- 
sions of the Civil War, or to foster or keep ahve any feeling of 
hostility to our brethren of other parts of the Union. No ; but 
these monuments are erected, and these great assemblages of our 
surviving veterans are held, in simple loyalty to the best and pur- 
est dictates of the human heart. The people that forgets its heroic 
dead is already dying at the heart ; and we believe it will make 
for the strength and the glory of the United States if the senti- 
ments that animate us today shall be perpetuated, generation 
after generation. Yes, we honor, and we bid our children honor, 
the loyalty to duty — to conscience — to fatherland — that inspired 
the men of '6i, and it is our prayer and our hope, that as the years 
and the generations pass, the rising and the setting sun, the moon 
and the stars, winter and summer, spring and autumn, will see the 
people of the South loyal to the memories of those four terrible 
but glorious years of strife ; loyally worshipping at the shrine of 
the splendid manhood of our heroic citizen-.soldiers, and the even 



more splendid womanhood, whose fortitude and whose endurance 
have challenged the admiration of the world. Then, when the 
united Republic, in years to come, shall call "To Arms!" our 
■children, and our children's children, will rally to the call, and 
emulating the fidelity and the supreme devotion of the soldiers 
of the Confederacy, will gird the Stars and Stripes with an impene- 
trable rampart of steel. 

But it is not the dead alone whom we honor here to-day. We 
hail the presence of the survivors of that tremendous conflict. 
Veterans of more than forty years ! you have come from all over 
the South — from the Patapsco and the Potomac, the James and the 
Rappahannock, the Cumberland andtheTennessee,the Mississippi 
and the Rio Grande — from the sea- shore — from the Gulf—from the 
Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies, and some of you even from the 
shores of the Pacific ocean — to pay your tribute to the dead Cause 
and the dead heroes who laid down their lives for it. May I, on 
^behalf of this great assembly — on behalf of the whole South — offer 
you a tribute of respect and veneration to-day ? We hail you as the 
honored survivors of a great epoch and a glorious struggle. We 
-welcome you as the men whom, above all others, the South 
delights to honor. 

It is indeed a matter of course that we, your comrades and your 
fellow Southrons, should honor you. But we are not alone. Your 
brave antagonists of the Northern armies begin at last to recog- 
nize the purity of your motives, as they have always recognized 
the splendor of your valor. The dispassionate historian, even 
though his sympathy is given to the North, no longer denies the 
sincerity of your belief in the sacredness of your cause. The 
world itself confesses the honesty of your purpose and. the glory 
of your gallant struggle against superior numbers and resources. 
Most of you that survive have no insignia of rank, no title of dis- 
tinction. You were private soldiers, but I see round your brows 
the aureole of a soldier s glory. You are transfigured by the 
battles you have fought. Nashville, Franklin, Perry ville, Murfrees- 
•boro, Shiloh, Chickamauga, in the West ; and Manassas, Seven 
Pines. Mechanicsville, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg. Chancellors- 
-ville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness and Cold Harbor, in the Fast. 

But you have done more than bare your breast to the foeman's 
steel. You have shown the world how the defeats of war may be 
turned to the victories of peace. You have taught mankind how a 
proud race may sustain disaster and yet survive and win the ap- 
plause of the world. In those terrible years of Reconstruction — • 
how much more bitter than the four years of war ! — you splendidly 
■exemplified the sentiment, 

" Mergas profuudo, pulchrior exilit ! " 
*Out of the depths of the bitter flood of reconstruction the South 
emerged, through your fortitude, through your patience, through 
your courage, more beautiful than ever. 

For all this your people honor you in your old age. They cher- 
ish the memory of your deeds, and will hand it down a priceless 
heirloom to their children's children. You are not pensioners on 
•the bounty of the Union, thank God ! Your manhood is not 



sapped by eating the bread of dependence. You have faced pov- 
erty as bravely as you faced the cannon's mouth, and so I salute 
you as the aristocracy of the South ! Your deeds have carved for 
you a place in the temple of her fame. They will not be forgot- 
ten — the world will not forget them. Your campaigns are studied 
to-day in the military schools of Europe ; yes, and at West Point, 
itself. 

But, alas ! your ranks are thinned. Each year the artillery 
of the great destroyer of human life mows down hundreds of the 
men in gray. One after another of our great captains have said 
" Adsu??t," as the angel of God has called the roll beyond the 
river. Since you last met, two of those illustrious leaders have 
passed from our sight — Longstreet, the brave, and Gordon, the 
superb — Gordon, whose white plume, like the plume of Henry 
of Navarre, was ever in the forefront of the charging line — Gor- 
don, of whom we may say — and what could be higher praise? — 
that he was worthy to be the lieutenant of Lee, and the suces.sor 
of Stonewall Jackson in the confidence and affection of the Army 
of Northern Virginia — Gordon, who, at Appomattox, taught us 
not to lose faith in God, and for a quarter of a century before his 
death taught us to have faith in our fellow-citizens of the North. 
As we think of those superb leaders, now gone from our gaze, we 
are tempted to say : Alas ! the stars by which we have guided 
our course have set, one by one, beneath the horizon. But, no ! 
Let us rather say that death has only placed them higher in the 
firmament, as fixed stars, whose deathless light shall never fail us 
in the generations to come. Dead ? Are these our heroes dead ? 
No, they yet live, as live the heroes of old ; as Leonidas lives in 
the firmament of patriotism ; as Shakespeare lives in the firma- 
ment of intellect ; as Newton and Bacon live in the realm of 
science ; as Jefi^erson and Madison and Marshall live in the realm 
of statesmanship ; as Washington lives in the realm of pure and 
steadfast love of liberty. Veterans, when I say this I am not giv- 
ing utterance to the partial and prejudiced view of a Southern 
soldier; I am but echoing the judgment of the world. 

The ablest military critic in the British army in this generation 
has placed Eee and Stonewall Jackson in the same group with 
Washington and Wellington and Marlborough, the five greatest 
generals, in his opinion of the English-speaking race ; and the 
President of the United States, Mr. Roosevelt, has said in his 
" Eife of Thomas H. Benton " : "The world has never seen better 
soldiers than those who followed Eee ; and their leader will un- 
doubtedly rank, as without any exception, the very greatest of all 
the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought 
forth; and this, although the last and chief of his antagonists, 
may himself claim to stand as the full equal of Wellington and 
Marlborough." As to the rank and file, General Hooker of the 
Union Army has said that " for steadiness and efficiency " Lee's 
army was unsurpassed in ancient or modern times, — "We have 
not been able to rival it." And Gen. Chas. A. Whittier of Mas- 
sachusetts has said, "The army of Northern Virginia will de- 
servedly rank as the best army which has existed on this conti- 



nent, suffering privations unknown to its opponent. The North 
sent no such array to the field." 

It is, then, not the extravagance of hyperbole, but the sober utter- 
ance of truth, to say that these heroic leaders and the heroic men 
who followed them — sublime in their devotion to duty; magnificently 
unregardful of the possibility of waging successful war against such 
vast odds of numbers and resources — have raised a monument more 
lasting than brass or marble ; higher and grander than the great 
pyramid of Egypt ; more splendid than the tomb of Napoleon at 
the Hotel des Invalides ; more sublime than Westminster Abbey 
itself — a monument which will rivet the gaze of generations yet 
unborn — a monument at whose feet mankind will bow in reverence 
so long as freedom survives on earth. It is a shaft not made with 
hands — a spiritual obelisk — on which all men will read : " Sacred 
to the memory of men who laid dozvn their lives, their fortunes, 
a7id their sacred honor in loyal obedieyice to the call of Duty as 
they tinderstood it. ' ' 

Comrades, standing here at the foot of that unseen column, reared 
by the valor and the virtue of the citizen-soldiers of the Armies of 
the South, I feel that a duty is laid upon me which I may not re- 
fuse to perform. From the hills and valleys of more than a thou- 
sand battlefields, where sleep the silent battalions in gray, there 
rises to my ear a solemn voice of command which I dare not dis- 
obey. It bids rne vindicate to the men of this generation the 
course which the men of the South followed in the crisis of 1861. 
It is not enough that their valor is recognized. It is not enough 
that their honesty is confessed. We ask of our Northern breth- 
ren — we ask of the world — a recognition of their patriotism and 
I'neir love of liberty. We cannot be silent as long as any asper- 
sion is cast by the pen of the historian, or by the tongue of the 
orator, upon their patriotic motives, or upon the loftiness of the 
object th^y had in view through all that tremendous conflict. We 
make no half-hearted apology for their act. It is justice for which 
we plead, not charity. 

The view of the origin and character of the course of action fol- 
lowed by the Southern States in 1861, which has so widely im- 
pressed itself upon the popular mind, maybe summed up in four 
propositions. First, that the secession of the Cotton States was 
the result of a conspiracy on the part of a few of their leaders, 
and that it was not the genuine expression of the mind of the 
people. Second, that the act whereby the So.uthern States with- 
drew from the Union was an act of disloyalty to the Constitution, 
and of treason to the United States Government. Third, that 
the people of the South were not attached to the Union and were 
eager to seize upon an excuse for its dissolution. Fourth, that 
the South plunged into a desperate war for the purpose of per- 
petuating slavery, and made that institution the corner-stone of 
the new confederacy which it sought to establish. 

I propose briefly to examine these propositions and shall en- 
deavor to show that every one of them, when scrutinized under 
the impartial light of history, must be pronounced essentially 



erroneous. Believing that they are erroneous and that they da 
grave injustice to the memory and the motives of the men of the 
South in that great crisis, it becomes a sacred duty to expose 
the unsubstantial foundation upon which these opinions rest, 
lest our children and our children's children should misread and 
misunderstand the acts of their fathers. 

1. I need not spend much time upon the first of these proposi- 
tions. The evidence at the disposal of the historian is conclusive 
that the action taken by the Cotton States in withdrawing from 
the Union had the support of an overwhelming majority of 
the people of those States. There was no conspiracy. The 
people were in advance of their leaders. The most recent, 
and perhaps the ablest, of the Northern historians, acknowl- 
edges this, and says that had not Davis, Toombs and 
Benjamin led in secession, the people would have chosen 
other leaders. The number of unconditional Union men in the 
seven States that first seceded, he declares, was insignificant, and he 
makes the remarkable admission, that, ' ' had the North thoroughly 
understood the problem, had it known that the people of the 
Cotton States were practically unanimous and that the action of 
Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee was backed by a large 
and genuine majority, it might have refused to undertake the 
seemingly unachievable task."^ There can be no question, then, 
that the impartial historian of the future will recognize that, 
whether right or wrong, the establishment of the Southern Con- 
federacy was the result of a popular movement — was the act not 
of a band of conspirators, but of the whole people, with a una- 
nimity never surpassed in the history of revolutions. 

2. I come now to the question whether the act of the Southern 
States in withdrawing from the Union was an act of disloyalty to 
the Constitution and of treason to the Government of the United 
States. This once burning question may now be discussed with- 
out heat. It is no longer a practical, but a thoroughly academic, 
question. The right of secession, if it ever existed, exists no 
longer. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution has 
changed the character of our political fabric. When we surren- 
dered at Appomattox, the right of secession was surrendered 
forever. 

But when we say that right does not exist to-day, we do not ac- 
knowledge that it did not exist in 1861. On the contrary, we 
maintain that it did exist, and that those who maintained its ex- 
istence had upon their side, logically and historically, the over- 
whelming weight of evidence. Our late antagonists who are now 
our brethren and our fellow-citizens, cannot be expected to agree 
with us in this proposition, but we put it to their candor and their 
sense of justice to say whether the South had not as good a right 
to her opinion of the meaning of the Constitution as the North had 
to hers. There were in i860 two interpretations of that instru- 
ment, there were two views of the nature of the Government 

* Rhodes' History of the Uuited Stales, Vol. Ill, p. 404. 



which was established. On what principle and by what authority 
can it be claimed that the view taken by the South was certainly 
wrong, and that the view taken by the North was certainly right ? 
Or, waiving the question which view was really right, we ask our 
Northern friends to tell us why the South was not justified in 
following that interpretation which she believed to be the true 
one? She had helped to build — nay, she was the chief builder 
of— the fabric of the Constitution. A Massachusetts historian* 
has said that, of the five great men who moulded the Nation, four 
were men of the South — Washington, Jefferson, Madison and 
Marshall ; and though these great men differed in political opinion, 
yet three at least, Washington, Jefferson and Madison, are on 
record as declaring that the Constitution was a compact between 
the States, and that those thirteen States were thirteen indepen- 
dent sovereignties.! 

Let the young men of the New South remember the part the 
Old South took in the planting and training of Anglo-Saxon civ- 
ilization on these Western Shores. 

*Mr. John Fiske. 

t Even Marshall might be appealed to in support of that view ; for in the 
debate on the adoption of the Constitution he used the following language : 
•' Can they [the Congress] go beyond the delegated powers ? If they were 
to make a law not warranted by any of the powers enumerated, it would 
be considered by the judges [of the Supreme Court] as an infringement of 
the Constitution which they are to guard. * * * They would dec lare 
it void." — (Magruder's Life of Marshall, p. 82.) 

Whatever he may have thought of the nature of the Government at a 
later period, he here stands forth as an advocate of that view which con- 
fines the Government to the exercise of such powers as are distinctly 
" enumerated." He was then ( 1788) in his thirty-third year. 

In the same debate, referring to Virginia's right to resume " her powers, 
if abused," he said, " it is a maxim that those who give may take away,. 
It is the people that give power, and can take it back. Who shall restrain, 
them? They are the masters who give it." Elliott's Debates, III, p. 227^ 
quoted in "The Republic of Republics," p. 109. Words could not more 
plainly avow the right of the people of a State to resume the powers dele- 
gated to the General Government. 

As to Mr. Madison's opinion, it is enough to quote his declaration that in 
adopting the Constitution, they were making " a government of a federal 
nature, consisting of many co-equal sovereignties." 

As to Washington's views, when he said of the proposed Union 
under the Constitution, " Is it best for the States to unite ?" he clearly recog- 
nized that it was the people of each State who were to form the Union. 
The United States would be when formed the creature of the States. He 
often speaks of the accession of the individual States to the proposed gov- 
ernment, which he calls ' ' the N'ew Confederacy.^' (Letter to General Piuck- 
ney, June 28, 1788. ) 

This new Union was in his eyes " a compact." In a letter to Madison, 
August 3 1788, he uses this language: " Till the States begin to act under 
the neiv compact.''^ (See on this " The Republic of Republics" pp. 222-30.) 

In the letter written by Washington, by order of the Convention, to accom- 
pany the copy of the proposed Constitution sent to each State, the follow- 
ing passage occurs : 

" It is obviously impracticable in the Federal Government of these States, 
to secure all rights of independent sovereignty to each, and yet provide for 
the interest and safety of all." This certainly implies that each State enter- 
ing the Union was an independent sovereign, which surrendered some of 
its rights for the good of all. 



lO 

Our New England brethren have been so diligent in exploiting 
the voyage of the Mayflower, and the landing of the pilgrims, 
and their services to morality and civilization and liberty in the 
new world, that they seem to have persuaded themselves, and 
would fain persuade the world, that American liberty is a plant 
chiefly of New England growth, and that America owes its ideas 
of political independence and representative government, and 
its reverence for conscience, to the sturdy settlers of our North- 
Eastern coasts. Her orators and her poets, year after year, on 
Forefathers' Day, not only glorify — as is meet — the deeds of their 
ancestors, but seem to put forward the claim, in amazing forget- 
fulness of history, that it is to New England that the great Re- 
public of the West owes the genesis of its free institutions, the 
inspiration of its love of civil and religious liberty, and its high 
ideals of character.* 

It is then not amiss to remind the Southern men of this genera- 
tion that fourteen years before the Mayflower landed her pilgrims 
at Plymouth Rock, three English ships, the Susan Constant, the 
Godspeed, and the Discovery, came to anchor in the James River, 
Virginia, and that the Vine of English Civilization and English 
Liberty was first planted, not on Plymouth Rock, in 1620, but at 
Jamestown Island, Va., on the 13th of May, 1607. What Web- 
ster so nobly said of the Mayflower, may be as truly said of these 
three ships that bore the first Virginia colony. "The stars that 
guided them were the unobscured constellations of civil and relig- 
ious liberty. Their decks were the altars of the living God." 
Let me also recall the fact that on July 30, 16 19, eighteen 
months before the pilgrims set foot on American soil, the Vine of 
Liberty had so deeply taken root in the Colony of Virginia that 
there was assembled in the Church at Jamestown a free represen- 
tative body (the first on American soil) — the House of Burgesses 
— to deliberate for the welfare of the people. There also, more 
than a century before the Revolution, when Oliver Cromwell's 
fleet appeared to whip the rebellious Old Dominion into obedience, 
Virginia demanded and obtained recognitionof the principle ''No 
taxation without representation'''' ; and there, in 1676, just one 
hundred years before the revolt of the Colonies, that remarkable 
man, Nathaniel Bacon, "soldier, orator, leader," raised the 
standard of revolt against the oppressions of the British Crown. 

But this is not all. That spot on Jamestown island, marked 
to-day by a ruined, ivy-clad, church tower and a group of moss- 
covered tombstones, is the sacred ground whence sprang that 
stream of genius and power which contributed most to the achieve- 
ment of American Independence, and to the organization of 
American liberty. That first colony, planted in Tidewater Vir- 
ginia, was, in the revolutionary period, prolific in men of genius 
and force and intense devotion to liberty never perhaps equaled 
in modern times in any region of equal size and of so small a pop- 
ulation. This is acknowledged by careful and candid historians 

* Rev. Dr, Coyle in a recent sermon before the Presbyterian General As- 
sembly refers to " the Puritan Conscience which put rock foundations under 
this Republic." 



II 



to-day, among whom I may mention Senator Lodge, of Massachu- 
setts. It was a Southern orator, Patrick Henry, who gave to the Col- 
onists in his matchless eloquence the slogan " Give me liberty or 
give me death ! " It was a Southerner, Richard Henry Lee, who 
brought forward in the first Congress the motion that these Col- 
onies by right ought to be free and independent ! It was a South- 
erner, Thomas Jefferson, who drafted the immortal Declaration of 
Independence ! It was a Southerner, George Mason, who had 
earlier drawn the Virginia Bill of Rights, a document of even pro- 
founder political statemanship, and which was taken by Massachu- 
setts as the model of her own Bill of Rights ! It was a Southerner, 
George Washington, who made good the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence by his sword after seven years of war ! It was a South- 
erner, James Madison, who earned the title " Father of the Con- 
stitution ! " It was a Southerner, John Marshall, who became its 
most illustrious interpreter ! 

I ask, then, in view of all this, whether the South was not jus- 
tified in believing that the views of Constitutional interpreta- 
tion which she had inherited from such a political ancestry were 
not the true views ? Let our Northern friends answer, in all can- 
dor, whether the South, with such an heredity as this, with such 
glorious memories of achievement, with such splendid traditions 
of the part her philosophers and statesmen and soldiers had taken, 
both in the winning of independence, and in the building of the 
temple of the Constitution, had not good reason for saying, " We 
will follow that interpretation of the Constitution, which we re- 
ceived from our fathers — from Jefferson and Madison and Wash- 
ington — rather than that which can claim no older, or greater, 
names than those of Story and Webster ?" For be it remembered 
that for forty years after the adoption of the Constitution, there 
was approximate unanimity in its interpretation upon the great 
issue on which the South took her stand in 1861. In truth Webster 
and Story apostatized from the New England interpretation ot the 
Constitution. It is an historical fact that the Constitution was re- 
garded as a compact between the States for a long period 
(not less than forty years after its adoption) by the leaders 
of opinion in the New England States. Moreover, in the 
same quarter, the Sovereignty of the States was broadly af- 
firmed ; and also the right of the States to resume, if need be, the 
powers granted under the Constitution.* 

These statements will no doubt be received by many with sur- 
prise, possibly with incredulity. Permit me then briefly to justify 
them by the unquestionable facts of history. The impartial his- 
torian of the future will recall the fact that the first threat of 
secession did not come from the men of the South, but from the 

*Samuel Adams objected to the preamble to the Constitution. " I stum- 
ble at the threshold," he said ; " I meet a National government instead of a 
Federal Union of Sovereign States." To overcome this, Gov. Hancock 
brought in the tenth amendment as to the reservation to the States of all 
powers not expressly delegated to the General Government. 

The Websterian dogmas had then no advocates in New England. Han- 
cock, Adams, Parsons, Bowdoin, Ames, were all for State sovereignty. 



12 

men of New England. Four times before the secession of South 
Carolina, the threat of secession was heard in the North — in 1802-3, 
in 181 1-12, in 1814, and in 1844-5. Thefirst time it came from Col. 
Timothy Pickering, of Massachusetts, a friend of Washington and 
a member of his Cabinet ; the second time from Josiah Quincy, 
another distinguished citizen of Massachusetts ; the third time from 
the Hartford Convention, in which five States were represented ; 
the fourth time from the Legislature of Massachusetts.* 

And what were the occasions calling forth these declarations of 
the purpose of dissolving the Union ? The first was the acquisition 
of Louisiana ; the .second was the proposed admission of Louisiana 
as a State into the Union ; the third was dissatisfaction occa- 
sioned by the War with Great Britain ; the fourth was 
the proposed annexation of Texas. These measures were 
all believed by the New England States to be adverse to 
their interests. The addition of the new States would, it was 
thought, destroy the equilibrium of power, and give the South a 
preponderance ; and therefore these stalwart voices were raised 
declaring that there was in the last resort a remedy, and that was 
the dissolution of the Union. This was the language held by the 
Legislature of the leading New England State in 1844 : 

"The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, faithful to the compact between 
the people of. the United States, according to the plain meaning and intent 
in which it was understood by them, is sincerely anxious for its preservation, 
but it is determined, as it doubts not the other States are, to submit to un- 
delegated powers in no body of men on earth." 

This stalwart utterance of the great State of Massachusetts 
expresses exactly the attitude of the seceding States in 1S61. 
They believed that * ' the compact between the people of the United 
States" had been violated, and that they could no longer enjoy 
equal rights within the Union, and therefore they refused to sub- 

* The statement in the text might be made even stronger, as the follow- 
ing facts will show : 

January 14, i8ri, Josiah Quincy, of Massachusetts, in the debate on the 
admission of Louisiana declared his "deliberate opinion that, if the bill 
passes, the bonds of this Union are virtually dissolved ; * * * that as it will 
be the right of all [the States], so it will be the dutj^ of some to prepare defi- 
nitely for a separation — amicably if they can, violently if they must." 

In 18 1 2 "pulpit, press, and rostrum" of New England advocated seces- 
sion. In 1839 ex-President John Quincy Adams urged publicly that it 
would be better for the States to " part in friendship from each other than 
to be held together by constraint," and declared that " the people of each 
State have the right to secede from the confederated Union." In 1S42 Mr. 
Adams presented a petition to Congress, from a town in Massachusetts, pray- 
ing that it would " immediately adopt measures peaceably to dissolve the 
Union of these States." In 1844, and again in 1845, the Lcgislatureof Mas- 
sachusetts avowed the right of secession and threatened to secede if Texas 
was admitted to the Union. 

Alex. Hamilton threatened Jefferson with the secession of New England 
*' unless the debts of the States were assumed by the General Government." 
February i, 1850, Mr. Hale offered in the Senate a petition and resolutions, 
asking that body to devise, " without delay some plan for the immediate 
peaceful dissolution of the American Union. " And Chase and Seward voted 
for its reception. (See oration of Mr. Leigh Robinson, Decembar 13, 1892, 
P-32 ) 



13 

:init to the exercise of " undelegated powers " on the part of the 
ISTational Government. 

Thus the North and the South, at these diiFerent epochs, held 
the same view of the right of withdrawal from the Union. When 
New England became alarmed lest the South should gain a pre- 
ponderance of power in the Union, she declared through the potent 
voice of the Legislature of Massachu.setts, that she would dissolve 
the Union rather than submit to the exercise by the Government of 
undelegated powers. 

The South held with great unanimity to the doctrine of State 
Sovereignty, and that that Sovereignty was inviolable by the 
General Government. She had good right and reason to believe 
it, for it had been the faith of her greatest statesmen from the very 
foundation of the Republic. Mr. Madison, the father of the Con- 
stitution, held to that faith ; and when Patrick Henry opposed 
the adoption of the Constitution upon the ground that the words 
" we, the people," seemed to imply a " consolidated government " 
and not "a compact between States," he replied that it was not 
"we, the people," as composing one great body, but the people 
as composing thirteen sovereignties."* 

In fact, the original language of the preamble was : " We, the 
people of the. States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode 
Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jerse}', Pennsylvania, Dela- 
ware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and 
^Georgia, do ordain, declare, and establish the following Constitu- 
tion." This preamble was pas.sed unanimously ; nor was there any 
change of opinion upon this point, but when it was seen that 
'Unanimous ratification by all the States could not be expected, it 
was decided that the consent of nine States should be sufficient to 
establish the new Confederacy, and as it could not be known be- 
forehand which nine of the thirteen would ratify the instrument, 
the names of the States had to be omitted from the preamble. 
Mr. Madison further says : " Each State, in ratifying the Consti- 
tution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, 
-and only to be bound by its own voluntary act."t 

Daniel Webster, in his great speech in reply to Mr. Hayne, in 
1830, and again in 1833, in his reply to Calhoun, argued that the 
Constitution was not a "compact," not a " confederacy," and 
that the acts of ratification were not " acts of accession." These 
terms, he said, would imply the right of secessioii, but they were 
terms unknown to the fathers ; they formed a " new vocabulary," 
invented to uphold the theory of State Sovereignty. 

But in fact all these terms were in familiar use in the great de- 
bates on the formation of the Constitution. In 1787 Mr. Gerry 
of Massachusetts, speaking in the Constitutional Convention said : 
"If nine out of thirteen States can dissolve the compact (he was 
speaking of the Articles of Confederation) six out of nine will be 
just as able to dissolve the new one hereafter." Governeur Mor- 
:ris of Pennsylvania, in the same debates, repeatedly described the 

♦Elliott's Debates, Ed. i836, Vol. Ill, p. 114, 115. 
t Federalist, No. XXXIX. 



14 

Constitution as a Compact. Alexander Hamilton speaks of the 
new Government as " a Confederate republic" a " Confederacy," 
and calls the Constitution a " Compact." General Washington 
writes of the Constitution as a Compact, and repeatedly uses the 
terms "accede" and "accession," and once the term "seces- 
sion." If any further proof were needed, it is furnished by the 
form in which both Massachusetts and New Hampshire ratified 
the Constitution. Both of these Spates, in their acts of ratifica- 
tion, refer to that Instrument as " an explicit and solemn com- 
pact. ' ' 

The proof then is overwhelming that the fathers and the 
Conventions of the States, used those very terms which Mr. 
Webster declared in 1830 and 1833 implied the right of secession, 
and which he had himself used in 18 19, and used again in 1850 and 
1 85 1. As to the independent sovereignty of the States, it was cer- 
tainly held by the Federalists as well as by their opponents.* 
Thus Alexander Hamilton defends the Constitutional exemption 
of the States from suit in the courts, on the ground that it was 
" one of the attributes of sovereignty," " enjoyed by the govern- 
ment of every State in the Union." Elsewhere he speaks of the 
States of the Union as " thirteen independent States." Benjamin 
Franklin, Governeur Morris, and Roger Sherman held similar Ian- 
gauge. And John Marshall, afterwards Chief Justice, denying that 
a State can be called to the bar of a Federal Court, said : *' Is it 
rational to suppose that the Sovereign power shall be dragged be- 
fore a court ?"t 

As to the right of dissolving the compact, as a last resort, in 
defense of its rights by any State, let our children and our chil- 
dren's children never forget that it was a right frequently asserted 
in the earliest period of our constitutional history. % Thus the peo- 
ple of Virginia, in their act of ratification, "declare and make 
known that the powers granted under the Constitution, being 
derived from the people of the United States, viay be resiwted by 
them, whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or 
oppression," and New York and Rhode Island went even farther 
and declared " that the powers of government w<!zjv be renssumed by 

* Charles Francis Adams in his Phi Beta Kappa Oration, 1902, said " It does 
not lie in the mouths of the descendants of the New England Federalists of 
the first two decennials of the 19th Century to ' invoke the avenging pen of 
history ' to record an adverse verdict in the case of any son of Virginia who 
threw in his lot with his State in 1861." (p. 34.) 

Governor Randolph of Virginia, in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 
urged that the rights of the States were safeguarded in the Constitution, 
and added, "If you say that notwithstanding the most express restrictions, 
they [the government] may sacrifice the rights of the States, then you es- 
tablish another doctrine — that the creature can destroy the creator, which is 
the most absurd and ridiculous of all doctrines." (Ill Elliott's Debates, p. 
363.) (See "The Republic of Republics, p. 396). 

John Dickinson and Ellsworth speak in the same strain of the independent 
sovereignty of the States. 

fElliott's Debates, III, p. 503. 

j Elliott's Debates, Vol. I, pp. 36c, 361, 369. 



15 

the people whenever it shall become necessary to their happiness, "f 
Thus the right of secession was solemnly asserted in the very acts 
by which these States ratified the Constitution. That assertion 
was part of the ratification. The ratification was conditioned by 
it. And the acceptance of the States as members of the Union 
carried with it the acceptance of the condition and the recognition 
of the right of secession. 

Mr. Webster, in his maturer years, in fact in the very last year 
of his illustrious life, distinctly recognized the right of -secession : 
In his speech at Capon Springs, Va., in 1851, he said : 

" If the South were to violate any part of the Constitution in- 
tentionally and systematically, and persist in so doing, year after 
year, and no remedy could be had, would the North be any longer 
bound by the rest of it ? And if the North were deliberately, 
habitually and of fixed purpose, to disregard one part of it, would 
the South be bound any longer to observe its other obligations? 
* * * I have not hesitated to say, and I repeat, that if the Northern 
States refuse, wilfully and deliberately, to carry into effect that 
part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive 
slaves, and Congress provide no remedy, the South would no 
longer be bound to observe the compact. A bargain cannot be 
broken on one side, and still bind the other side."t 

Looking back then to-day, my comrades, over the four and 
forty years which separate us from the acts of secession passed by 
the Southern States, we say to the men of this generation, and 
to those who will come after us, that the opprobrium heaped upon 
those who then asserted the right of secession is undeserved. 
That right had not then been authoritatively denied. On the 
contrary, it had been again and again asserted North and South 
by eminent statesmen for nearly sixty years after the formation of 
the Union. Those who held it had as good right to their opinion 
as those who denied it. The weight of argument was overwhelm- 
ingly in their favor. So clear was this, that the U. S. Govern- 
ment wisely decided, after the fall of the Confederacy, that it was 
not prudent to put Jefferson Davis upon his trial for treason. 
Let it be remembered that the formation of the United States, in 
1788, was accomplished by nine of the States seceding from the 
Confederacy which had existed for eleven years, and which had 
bound the States entering into it to " a perpetual Union." Thus 
the Union itself was the child of Secessioii I 

These arguments appeared to us convincing then. They are 
no less convincing to-day. They may not appear so to some of 
our friends in the North ; but we appeal to them in all candor, 
and I do not believe our appeal will be in vain, to say whether the 



t In 1898, Mr. Madison, in a report to the Virginia Legislature, said : 
"The States, being the parties to the Constitutional Compact, and in their 
sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity that there can be no tribunal 
above their authority to decide in the last resort whether the compact made 
by them be violated." 

X Curtis's lyife of Webster, II, 518, 519. 



i6 

South, believing as she did, was not justified in the forum of con- 
science in doing w/ial she did. The eminent Northern historian, 
to whom allusion has already been made, acknowledges that "a 
large majority of the people in the South believed in the constitu- 
tional right of secession," and as a consequence that the war on 
the part of the National Government "seemed to them a war of 
subjugation." * Again he says, it was " in their eyes a fight for 
their property and their liberty against spoliation and conquest." 
But if so, was not their resistance justified? Is it not the act of 
patriotism to resist spoliation and conquest, and were not those 
dead heroes of ours, whose consecrated memories we honor to-day, 
patriots in the noblest sense of the word ? Upon every recurring 
Fourth of July for 85 years the Southern men had been reminded 
by the reading of the Declaration of Independence, that " Govern- 
ments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." 
Is it surprising then that, when the people of the South, e?i masse. 
deliberately refuse their consent to the Government of the United 
States, they should have felt themselves justified in what they did 
by the principles of the Declaration of Independence? Our argu- 
ment for the independent sovereignty of the States may not appear 
conclusive to many of our Northern friends, but at least they cannot 
deny to the men of '61 the same right of revolution that their patriot 
sires and ours asserted in 1776. But, if so, then we claim the 
assent even of those who most stoutly deny the right of secession, 
to the assertion that the armies of the South were composed, not 
of traitors, but of patriots. They will, they must, agree with us, 
that no man can be a traitor if his heart is pure and his motives 
patriotic. 

There was a time, during those dark years of reconstruction, 
when public opinion in the North demanded that we who had 
fought under the Southern flag should prove the sincerity of our 
acceptance of the results of the war by acknowledging the unright- 
eousness of our cause, and by confessing contrition for our deeds. 

But could we acknowledp:e our cause to be unrighteous when we 
still believed it just? Could we repent of an act done in obedi- 
ence to the dictates of conscience ? The men of the North may 
claim that our judgment was at fault ; that our action was not 
justified by reason ; that the fears that goaded us to withdraw 
from the Union were not well grounded ; but, so long as it is ad- 
mitted that we followed Duty as we understood it, they cannot 
ask us to repent. A man can only repent, I repeat, of what he 
is ashamed, and it will not be claimed that we should be ashamed 
of obeying the dictates of conscience, in the face of hardship and 
danger and death. 

That able and honest, though biassed, historian to whom I 
have just referred, speaking of Robert E. Lee, confesses that 
"censure's voice upon the action of such a noble soul is hushed," 
and he declares that the time will come when the whole Ameri- 
can people will "recognize in him one of the finest products of 
American life, for surely as the years go on we shall see that 

* Rhodes History of the United States, III, p. 400, 401. 



17 

such a life can be judged by no partisan measure, and we shall 
come to look upon him as the English of our day regard Wash- 
ington, who little more than a century ago they delighted to call 
a rebel."* Most true a testimony, but, my comrades, what is here 
so nobly acknowledged of our glorious chieftain, must be seen to 
be true also of the gallant men who followed him ; and we feel 
sure that the time is coming, if it has not already come, when it 
will be recognized all over the land of which that starry flag is the 
emblem, that the soldiers who fought under those tattered battle 
flags of the Southern cross, were animated by as pure a patriotism 
and as high a devotion to liberty as any men who ever fought, 
on any field, in any age of the world. That acknowledgment 
indeed has already been made, and made nearly a generation 
ago by two of the most gallant sons of New England who were 
our foemen in the great strife — I mean General Francis Bartlett 
and Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes of Massachusetts. Captain 
Holmes now occupies a seat upon the Supreme Bench of the United 
States. Let me ask you to listen to the generous words which he 
uttered nearly a quarter of a century ago : 

" We believed that it was most desirable that the North ^should 
win ; we believed in the principle that the Union is indissoluble, 
but we equally believed that those who stood against us held just 
as sacred convictions that were the opposite of ours, and we re- 
spected them as every man with a heart must respect those who 
give all for their belief, "f 

All honor to the valiant soldier and accomplished scholar who 
uttered those words ! All honor, too, to another noble son of New 
England, Charles Francis Adams, who has more recently declared, 
recognizing the same principle, that both the North and the South 
were right in the great struggle of the Civil War, because each 
believed itself right. | 

3. I come now to the third proposition which I engaged to con- 
sider. It is said, and widely believed, that the people of the South 
were not attached to the Union and were eager to seize upon an 
excuse for its dissolution. Even if it were conceded that the South 
had the right of secession, or at any rate the right of revolution, 
we are told that if she had loved the Union as she ought to have 
loved it, she would not have exercised that right. 

In considering this assertion it will be necessary to distinguish 
in our reply between the States that first seceded, and the border 
States of Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Arkansas, which 
later gave in their adhesion to the Southern Confederacy. As to 

*M,p. 413. 

t Address at Keene, N. H., on Memorial Day. 

X When Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee were cadets at West Point the 
text-books in use on political science were by St. George Tucker, a Southern 
writer, and William Rawle, a Northern writer, and both taught the right of 
a State to secede. (See Republic of Republics, by W.J. Sage, p. 32.) Can 
these illustrious men be attainted as traitors because they put in practice the 
principles taught them by the authority of the Government of the United 
States ? 



the former — the Cotton States — if it be true, as candid historians 
acknowledge, that their people "a// held that the North was un- 
constitutionally and unjustly attempting to coerce the sovereign 
States "*; if it be true, as we have seen is now conceded, that the 
people of those States solemnly believed that their liberties were 
assailed, and that the war waged against them was a war of sub- 
jugation, then I submit that they were constrained to choose 
between their love of the Union and their love of Liberty ; and I 
do not believe that any brave and candid patriot of any Northern 
State will condemn them because, holding that belief, they made 
the choice they did. The judgment of the South may be im- 
peached, f but not her patriotism ; not her love for the Union ; if, 
shut up to such an alternative, she preferred Liberty without 
Union to Union without Liberty. 

The case of the border States is somewhat different. Mary- 
land, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, 
were all opposed to secession. They refused to follow the lead of 
South Carolina. Forexample.as late as April 4 Virginia voted by 89 
to 45 against the ordinance of secession. They believed the Southern 
States had just grievances against the North, and that there was 
much to justify the fears, which they entertained, but they were not 
prepared to dissolve the Union. They still hoped for redress within 
the Union by Constitutional means. Moreover, the men who 
became our greatest generals and our most illustrious and de- 
termined leaders in the Southern Confederacy were, a majority 
of them, earnest Union men. I think it may be said, too, that the 
States which furnished most of the munitions of war and most of 
the fighting men were opposed to secession. The Union which 
their forefathers had done so much to create, ;|; first by the sword 
and then by the pen and the tongue, was dear to their hearts. 

*Rhodes Id., p. 402. 

fYet her judgment was sustained by some of the most illustrious men of 
the North. Millard Fillmore had said in 1856, referring to the possible elec- 
tion of Fremont, as a sectional President : " Can they have the madness or 
folly to believe that our Southern brethren would submit to be governed by 
such a chief magistrate ? " And Rufus Choate, the same year, wrote that if 
the Republican party "accomplishes its objects and gives the Government 
to the North, I turn my eyes from the consequences. To the fifteen States 
of the South that government will appear an alien government. It will ap- 
pear worse. It will appear a hostile government. It will represent to their 
eye a vast region of States organized upon anti-slavery, flushed by triumph, 
cheered onward by the voices of the pulpit, tribune and press ; its mission 
to inaugurate freedom and put down the oligarchy ; its constitutiou the glit- 
tering and sounding generalities of natural right." 

If this was true in 1856, how much more in i860, after the John Brown 
raid, and when the hostility between the North and the South had reached 
such an acute stage ! 

X When, after the Revolution, it became apparent that jealousy of the pre- 
ponderance of Virginia, resulting from the vastness of her domain, would 
prevent the formation of the Union, that State, with truly queenly gener- 
osity, gave to the Union her Northwestern Territory, out of which the States 
of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota, were 
afterwards carved. This was in 17S7. Has any other State, or group of 
States, done as much in proof of attachment to the Union? Moreover she 
dedicated this vast territory as free soil, by the ordinance of 1787. 



19 

But there came a cruel issue. On the 15th of April, 1861, Presi- 
dent Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 men to 
coerce the seceded States back into the Union. The border States 
were called upon to furnish their quota of armed men to march 
against their Southern brethren. Thus an issue was forced upon 
them which the future historian, however antagonistic to the 
South, must ponder with sympathy and emotion. The men of 
these border States were compelled to decide either to send soldiers 
to fight against their brethren, or to say, ' ' We will throw in our lot 
with them and resist military coercion." Now, whatever division 
of sentiment existed in regard to the policy, or even the right, of 
secession, there was almost complete unanimity in these States in ^ 
repudiating the right of coercion. That right had been vehemently 
repudiated in the discussions in the Constitutional Convention by 
James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Edmund Randolph. 
The South remained true to the doctrine of the fathers on this 
point.* 

It is vain to ask at this date what would have happened if that 
fatal proclamation of April 15th had never been issued, but it is 
impossible to repress the thought that perhaps, after all, the truest 
statesmanship rested with those who, like Edward Everett and • 
Horace Greeley and William H. Seward and General Scott, be- 
lieved that the policy of coercion was a political error. Certain 
it is that but for that policy those great States just enumerated 
would not have thrown in their lot with the Southern Confederacy, 
and it is a supposition by no means destitute of rational founda- 
tion that without their support the seven States which had already 
seceded would have ultimately sought re-admission to the Union, 
and that the Union might have been saved, and slavery ultimately 
abolished, without the dreadful cost of a fratricidal war and with- 
out the unspeakable horrors of that reconstruction period, when 
the star of liberty sank as if to rise no more on the Southern 
States, t and without that act — the quintessence of injustice to the 
whites and of unkindness to the blacks themselves — I mean the 
act which conferred the right of suffrage indiscriminately on the 
newly-emancipated slaves. 

But, waiving all this, I come back to the question. Can any 
blame attach to the people of the border States for choosing as 
they chose in the face of the cruel alternative, which was forced 
upon them by Mr. Lincoln's proclamation, to abandon the Union, 
or to draw their swords against their Southern brethren ? 

It has been well and wisely said by a recent historian (Mr. 
Rhodes) that "the political reason of Virginia, Maryland and 

* Mr. Madison opposed the motion to incorporate in the Constitution the 
power of coercing a State to its duty, and by unanimous consent the project 
was abandoned. Alexander Hamilton denounced the proposal to coerce a 
State as " one of the maddest projects ever devised." Edmund Randolph said 
it meant " civil war." 

t Out of that horror of great darkness the heroic soul of Robert Edward 
Lee cried aloud in agony: " Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I ; 
would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword 
in this right hand." 



20 

Kentucky inclined them to the North, their heart-strings drew 
them to the South." I put it to any man with a heart to say^ 
whether, when the bayonet is directed against the bosom of a 
member of one's own household, he is to blame for throwing 
himself in the breach in defense, even though the bayonet be in 
the hand of the officer of the .law ? I affirm that the ties of 
blood and kindred are more sacred even than those which 
bind a man to the government of his country. Could 
the men of Virginia and North Carolina and Tennessee 
be expected to raise their hands against their family altars 
and firesides, whatever view the)' might have taken of the 
constitutional questions at issue ? But the men of those States 
believed with great unanimity that the sovereignty of a State 
was inviolable b}' the General Government. That was the faith 
they had received from their fathers, from a long line of illustrious 
statesmen and political philosophers. Of this let one decisive ex- 
ample suffice. Though Robert E. Lee abhorred the idea of 
secession and loved the Union with a passionate devotion, yet 
when he was asked by a member of a committee of Congress 
whether he did not consider that he was guilty of treason in 
drawing his sword in behalf of the South, he answered : " No, I 
believed m)^ allegiance was due to the State of Virginia." 

The people of the South believed, as we have said, that gov- 
ernment derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. 
The}' believed the General Government had no rightful power of 
coercion. Their New England brethren had for man}' years 
confirmed them in that belief. Moreover they believed a union 
by force not the Union which the fathers had in view. A gov- 
ernmental fabric pinned together by bayonets did not seem to 
them a republic, but a- despotism. 

4th. I come now to consider the opinion, so widely held, that 
the South plunged into a desperate war for the purpose of perpet- 
uating slavery, and made that institution the cornerstone of the 
new confederacy which it sought to establish. Before dealing di- 
rectly with this, however, a little history upon the subject of the 
relation of the South to slavery will be salutary. 

Certainly we have no tears to shed over its abolition. There is 
not a man in the South who would wish to see it re-established. 
But there are several facts, unknown to some, and ignored by 
other, historians, which are essential to a right understanding of 
this question. I shall hold them up to the light to-day because I 
would not have the attitude of that dear, noble. Old South misrep- 
resented or misunderstood by our descendants. 

In the first place let it never be forgotten that it was the gov- 
ernment of England, and not the people of the South, which was 
originally responsible for the introduction of slavery. In 1760 
South Carolina passed an act to prohibit further importation of 
slaves, but England rejected it with indignation. 

The Colony of Virginia again and again and again protested to 
the British King against sending slaves to her shores, but in vain — 



21 

they were forced upon her.* Then, too, Virginia was the first of 
all the States North or South, to prohibit the slave trade, and 
Georgia was the first to incorporate such a prohibition in her 
organic constitution. In fact Virginia was in advance of the 
whole world on this subject ; she abolished the slave trade in 1778, 
nearly thirty years before England did, and the same period before 
New England was willing to consent to its abolition. Again, at 
the formation of the Constitution, Virginia raised her protest 
against the continuance of that traffic, but New England raised a 
voice of objection, and uniting her influence with that of South 
Carolina and Georgia secured the continuance of the slave trade 
for twenty years more, by Constitutional provision.! On the other 
hand the first statute establishing slavery in America was passed 
by Massachusetts, December, 1641, in her code entitled Body of 
Liberties. The first fugitiv^e slave law was enacted by the same 
State. She made slaves of her captives in the Pequot war. An- 
other fact to be remembered is that every Southern State legis- 
lated against the slave trade. 

Thus slavery was an inheritance which the people of the South 
received from the fathers; and if the States of the North, very 
soon after the Revolution, abolished the institution, it cannot be 
claimed that the abolition was dictated by moral considerations, 
but by differences of climate, soil, and industrial interests. J 

- It existed in several of the Northern States more than fifty years 
after the adoption of the Constitution, while the importation of 
slaves into the South continued to be carried on by Northern 
merchants and Northern ships, without interference in the traffic 
from any quarter, until it was prohibited by the spontaneous ac- 
tion of the Southern States themselves. 

Note this also : The contest between the North and the South 
over the extension of slavery to the territories, was a contest on 
the part of the South for equal rights under the Cerstitution, and 
it ought to be clearly understood that it did not involve the in-^rease 
of slavery. Had that right been conceded not one additional 

* One hundred petitions against the introduction of slaves were sent by 
the colonists of Virginia to the British Government. 

t The Critical Period of American History, by John Fiske, p. 262. 

t The Supreme Court in 1S57 held the following language : " This change 
had not been produced by any change of opinion in relation to this race, 
but because it was discovered by experience that slave labor was unsuited 
to the climate and productions of these States, for some of them * * * were 
actively engaged in the slave trade ". 

Goodell's " Slavery and Anti-Slavery " — an authority not friendly to the 
South— says (pp. lo-ii) that the merchants of New England seaports 
" almost monopolized the immense profits of that lucrative, but detestable, 
trade." v..--.:{ 

The principal operation of abolition in the North, says an English au- 
thority, " was to transfer Northern slaves to Southern markets." (Ingram's 
History of Slavery, London, 1S95, p. 184.) 

On March 26, 1788, the Legislature of Massachusetts passed a law order- 
ing all free negroes out of the State. If they would not go voluntarily they 
■were to be whipped out. This confirms the view stated in the text. 



22 

slave would have been added to the number existing in the coun- 
try. "It was a question of the distribution or dispersion of the 
slaves rather than of the extension of slavery. Removal is not 
extension. Indeed, if emancipation was the end to be desired, 
the dispersion of the negroes over a wider area, among addi- 
tional territories, eventually to become States, and in climates 
unfavorable to slave labor, instead of hindering, would have pro- 
moted this object by diminishing the diflficulties in the way of 
ultimate emancipation."* 

And now I call your attention to a fact of capital importance 
in this discussion, viz; that the sentiment in favor of emancipa- 
tion was rapidly spreading in the South in the first quarter of the 19th 
Century. Wilson acknowledges "there was no avowed advo- 
cate of slavery " at that time in Virginia. It is stated on highf 
authority, that in the year 1S26, there were 143 emancipation 
societies in the whole country ; and of this number 103 were 
established in the South. It is well known that one branch of the 
legislature of Virginia came within one vote of passing a law of 
emancipation in the year 1832, and I was assured in i860, 
by Col. Thomas Jefferson Randolph of Virginia, the grandson of 

*rhis is the language of Jefferson Davis, but the argument is Henry 
Clay's. In 1820 he argued that the extension of slavery was farseeiug hu- 
manity, and Mr. Jefferson agreed with him, saying that spreading the slaves 
over a larger surface " will dilute the evil everywhere and facilitate the 
means of getting finally rid of it." Mr. Madison took the same view. 
These three statesmen were all earnest emancipationists. 

tjudge Temple of Tennessee. "The Covenanter, The Cavalier and The 
Puritan," p. 209. 

" In 1822 there were five or six abolition societies in Kentucky. In 
1819 the first distinctively emancipation paper in the United States was pub- 
lished in Jouesbo»-o', Eastern Tennessee." There were eighteen emancipa- 
tion societies in that region organized by the Covenanters, Methodists and 
the Quakers. 

Id., p. 208. 

A Massachusetts writer, Geo. Lunt, says : '' The States of Virginia, 
Kentucky, and Tennessee were engaged in practical movements for the 
gradual emaucipation of their slaves. This movement continued until it 
was arrested by the aggressious of the Abolitionists." 

The people of the South believed they were, at heart, more friendly to 
the Negro race than their Northern brethren, and such facts as the follow- 
ing appeared to justify their belief. In 1830, Senator Benton called attention 
to the " actual expulsion of a great body of free colored people from the 
State of Ohio, and not one word of objection, not one note of grief." The 
whole number expatriated was estimated at ten thousand. He added : 
" This is a remarkable event, paralleled only by the expulsion of the INIoors 
from Spain and the Huguenots from France." In 1846 the liberated slaves 
of John Randolph were driven by a mob away from the lands which had 
been purchased for them in Ohio. In 1855 the Topeka (Kansas) Constitu- 
tion adopted by the Freesoilers contained an article, ratified by a vote of 
almost three to one, forbidding any free negro to reside in the State, and 
this was accepted by the Republican House of Representatives. In i860 
the Constitutions of thirty out of thirty-four States of the Union excluded 
negroes from exercising the suffrage. Facts like these did not tend to 
confirm the confidence of the people of the South in the sincerity of the 
agitation on behalf of the negro. 



23 

Mr. Jefferson — himself an influential member of the Legislature 
in 1832 — that emancipation would certainly have been carried the 
ensuing year, but for the revulsion of feeling which followed the 
fanatical agitation of the subject by the abolitionists of the period. 
The legislature of 1832, though it defeated the Emancipation 
bill by one vote, yet passed a resolution postponing the considera- 
tion of the subject till public opinion had further developed.* 

It is our belief end we put the statement on record, that 
our children and hildren's children may remember it, that but 
for passions naturally roused by the violent attacks made upon 
the moral character of the Southern slaveholder, slavery would 
have been peaceably abolished in the border States before the ^ 
middle of the 19th Century, and it cannot be doubted that the sen- 
timent against it must ultimately have become so strong that it 
would also have been abolished in the Cotton States without 
violence and without war. 

This opinion is scouted by Northern historians ; but let the 
facts be calmly weighed in the balance : 

It is acknowledged that slavery was almost universally consid- 
ered a great evil in the South from 1789 down to 1837. 

It is further acknowledged that public opinion there underwent 
a revolution on this subject in the decade 1832-42 ; it was now 
spoken of by some of her writers and leaders for the first time 
as a blessing, f 

It is a fact which cannot be denied in the light of history, that 
the sentiment in favor of emancipation was rapidly spreading in 
the South down to 1832. I have already quoted the statement 
made to me in i860 by a member of the Legislature of Virginia of 
1 83 1-2 that its members were agreed at that time on the principle 
of Emancipation. 

What, then, produced this fateful change of sentiment, which 
the historian records between 1832 and 1837 ? It is often said the ^ 
invention of the cotton gin was the cause. But that invention 
came in 1793. It was forty years too early to account for this 
phenomenon which we seek to understand. 

It is our belief that the future historian, who shall be a care- 
ful student of human nature, and of the motives which influence 
its action, as well as of historical facts, will see in the abolition 
crusade which was launched by William Lloyd Garrison, Jan. ist, ^ 
1 83 1, the real cause of this revolution in Southern sentiment on 
the subject of slavery. 

The violence and the virulence of that crusade produced its 

*The Richmond Whig of IVfarch 6, 1832, said: 

" The j^reat mass of Virginia herself triumphs that the slavery question 
has been taken up by the Legislature, that her legislators are grappling with 
the monster, and they contemplate the distant but ardently desired result 
[Emancipation] as the supreme good which a benevolent Providence could 
vouchsafe." Niles Register, Dec. 10, 1831, p. 266 and p. 78. 

fSee Rhodes Id. L, pp. 54, 68. 



24 

natural result.* It angered the South. It stifled discussion. It 
checked the movement toward emancipation. It forced a more 
stringent policy toward the slave. 

The people of the South, of whom Van Hoist writes that they 
•were as moral and as religious as any other people in the world, 
found themselves held up to the odium of mankind for the abomi- 
nable crime of holding men in bondage, an act which holy men 
like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield had committed in 
the 1 8th. Century, without offense to the most sensitive con- 
science. But this was not all. The publication of Garrison's 
" Liberator " January i, 1831, was followed, seven months after, 
by Nat. Turner's negro insurrection, in which 61 persons, men, 
women and children, were murdered in the night. The South 
naturally, and I think with reason, connected these two events 
as cause and effect,t and the ghastly spectre of servile insurrec- 
tion, like that which desolated San Domingo, rose before the 
imagination of the people from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. 
After this the Emancipation Societies in the South were dis- 
solved and all discussion of the subject ceased. As to the character 
-of that abolition Crusade, I agree with Henry Clay that its authors 
were reckless of consequences, ready to ' ' hurry us down that dread- 
ful precipice that leads to Civil War and the dissolution of the 
Union." I agree with Rufus Choate that the Abolition party 
was " a party which knows one-half of America only to hateit." 
I agree with Edward Everett in applying to the abolitionists the 
-words of the poet : — 

" Arouse the tiger of Hyrcanean deserts ; 
Strive with the half-starved lion for its prey ; 
Lesser the risk, than rouse the slumbering fire 
Of wild fanaticism." 

As to its methods, it is enough to recall the fact that in 1835 
President Jackson in his message to Congress called attention to 
the transmission through the mails " of inflammatory appeals ad- 
dressed to the passions of the slaves, in prints and in various 
sorts of publications, calculated to stimulate them to insurrec- 
tion, and to produce all the horrors of a servile war." Now, bear- 
ing these facts m mind, and remembering the statement quoted 
from Col. Thomas Jefferson Randolph, that the abolition crusade 
was the immediate cause of the legislature of Virginia abandon- 
ing the scheme of emancipation, which they had previously been 
agreed on in principle, we hold that the future historian will con- 
firm our claim that but for the fanaticism of the abolitionists, 

* One of these writers said the only hope for the moral improvement of 
the whites in the South was amalgamation with the black race. Slavehold- 
ers were called "bloodhounds." 

t The Governor of Virginia publicly expressed his belief that this insur- 
rection " was designed and matured by fanatics in some of the neghboring 
states." 



25 

slavery would certainly have been peaceably abolished in Vir- 
ginia, and probably in the other Southern States.* 

But this is not the whole story. That movement was as essen- 
tially unjust as it was violent and fanatical. It was a demand '^ 
for immediate emancipation without compensation or considera- 
tion of any kind. England in 1833 abolished slavery in the 
West Indies, but she compensated the slave-owners, devoting 
$100,000,000 to that purpose. But never in all the long abolition 
agitation of thirty years, from 1831 to 1861, was there any prop- 
osition to remunerate the South for the loss of her slaves.f Her 
people were expected to make a sacrifice for emancipation never 
demanded before of any people on earth. I do not forget Mr. 
Ivincoln's proposal, in March, 1862, but that was addressed to the 
Border States which had not seceded, and besides, had it been 
otherwise, it came too late, when flagrant war had embittered the 
hostility between the sections. 

It is said, however, to the reproach of the South, that her sen- 
timents on the subject of slavery were behind the age in 1861. 
But how far was she behind ? And why ? 

Let her critics remind themselves that, as late as 1821, the 
State of Rhode Island sent a slave-trader to represent her in the ^ 
United States Senate. As late as 1833 a great English minister. 
Sir Robert Peel, would have nothing to do with either immediate 
emancipation or gradual. And Mr. Gladstone, at the same epoch, 
while admitting that the extinction of slavery was " a consumma- 
tion devoutly to be desired and in good earnest to be forwarded," 
yet held that "immediate and unconditional emancipation with- 
out a previous advance in character, must place the negro in a 
state where he would be his own worst enemy." It is fair to 
remember also that Pitt, Fox, Grenville and Grey while eager to 
bring the slave trade to an instant end, habitually disclaimed as 
calumny any intention of emancipating the blacks on the sugar 
islands. 

Again the dispassionate enquirer will reflect that it was much 
easier, and much less costly, to be an enthusiastic abolitionist in old 
England, or New England (where slavery was not profitable), 
than in the Southern States, where the labor of the black was 
necessary to the cultivation of the great staples. 

The people of the South, too, could better realize the difficulty 
and the danger of emancipation. She was, as Jefferson said, ^' 
in the position of the man who held the wolf by the ears — she 
didn't want to hold on, but she was afraid to let go. 

Was she to blame if she feared to repeat the mistakes and fail- 

*Daniel Webster in his 7th of March speech attributed the change of sen- 
timent in Virginia on the subject of slavery to the intemperance of the aboli- 
tionists. Many other Northern leaders were of the same opinion. 

tMr. John Ford Rhodes (I., 381) indeed says that there can be no doubt 
that the North would have gladly agreed to emancipation with compensa- 
tion, but he is not able to adduce any evidence in support of this opinion ^ 
beyond an obiter dictum of Mr. Seward in the Senate that he was willing 
" to apply the National treasure to effect the peaceful, voluntary removal 
of slavery itself." 



26 

ures of the English abolition movement, of which Mr. Disraeli 
said : " The movement of the middle class for the abolition of 
slavery was virtuous, but it was not wise. It was an ignorant 
movement. The history of the abolition of slavery by the Eng- 
lish, and its consequences, would be a narrative of ignorance, 
injustice, blundering, waste and havoc, not easily paralleled in the 
history of mankind." If then we acknowledge that the South 
was behind the rest of the civilized world in 1861 in her sentiment 
on the subject of slavery, we think her apology is ample ; First, that 
she was interested in the perpetuation of slavery as no other people 
ever was ; Second, that the difficulty and the danger of emancipa- 
tion pressed upon her as upon no other people ; and third, that 
her sentiment, which had been for a quarter of a century moving 
steadily toward emancipation, was violently turned back by the 
fanaticism of the abolition crusade.* 

But the Southern Confederacy is reproached with the fact that 
it was deliberately built on slavery. Slavery, we are told, was 
its corner-stone. Even that most honest historian, Mr. Rhodes, 
says, "their fight, they averred, was for liberty, and yet they 
were weighted by the denial of liberty to three and one-half 
million of human beings". 

But if slavery was the corner-stone of the Southern Confederacy 
what are we to say of the Constitution of the United States ? That 
instrument as originally adopted by the thirteen colonies contained 
three sections which recognized slavery. f And whereas the 
Constitution of the Southern Confederacy prohibited the slave 
trade, the Constitution of the United States prohibited the abolition 
of the slave trade for twenty years ! And if the men of the south 
are reproached for denying liberty to three and a half millions of 
human beings, at the same time that they professed to be waging 
a great war for their own liberty, what are we to say of the re- 
volting colonies of 1776, who rebelled against the British Crown 
to achieve their liberty, while slavery existed in every one of the 
thirteen colonies unrepudiated ? Cannot those historians who deny 
that the South fought for liberty, because they held the blacks in 
bondage, see, that upon the same principle they must impugn 
the sincerity of the signers of the Declaration of Independence? 
For while, in that famous instrument, they affirmed before the 
world that all men were created free and equal, and that " Gov- 
ernments derive their just powers from the consent of the gov- 
erned," they took no steps whatever to free the slaves which were 
held in every one of the thirteen colonies. No, my friends, if the 
corner-stone of the Constitution of the Southern Confederacy was 
slavery, the Constitution of 1789 — the Constitution of the United 

*We acknowledge with sorrow that there was a painful deterioration in 
the attitude of many influential men in the South toward slavery between 
1840 and i860. There was even a movement of some strength in favor of 
the revival of the slave trade in the decade preceding the war. This change 
of view cannot be excused, but it was undoubtedly the reaction from the vio- 
lent fanaticiem of the abolition movement. 

fArticle I, Sections 2 and 9, and Article IV, Sec. 2. 



27 

States — had a worse corner-stone, since it held its aegis of pro- 
tection over the slave trade itself ! We ask the candid historian 
then to answer this question: If the Colonists of 1776 were free- 
men fighting for liberty, though holding men in slavery in every 
one of the thirteen colonies, why is the tribute of patriotism denied 
to the Southern men of r86i because they too held men in bond- 
age? 

If George Washington, a slave-holder, was yet a champion of 
liberty, how can that title be denied to Robert E. Lee ? 

Slavery was not abolished in the British dominions until the 
year 1833 : — Will any man dare to say there were no champions 
of human liberty in England before that time? 

But after all that may be said, we are told that slavery was the 
cause of the war, and that the citizen-soldiers of the South sprang 
to arms in defense of slavery. 

Yes, my Comrades, History, or rather let us say Calumny, mas- 
querading as History, has told the world that that battle flag of 
yours was the emblem of slave power, and that you fought, not 
for liberty, but for the right to hold your fellow-men in bondage. 

Think of it, soldiers of Lee ! Think of it, followers of Jackson 
and Stewart and Albert Sidney Johnston ! You were fighting, they 
say, for the privilege of holding your fellow-men in bondage ! 
Will you for one moment acknowledge the truth of that indict- 
ment? Ah, no ! that banner of the Southern Cross was studded 
with the stars of God's heaven, like Old Glory itself. You could 
not have followed a banner that was not the banner of liberty ! 
You sprang from the loins of freemen ! You drank in freedom 
with your mother's milk ! Your revolutionary sires were not in- 
spired by a more intense devotion to liberty than you were ! 

Tell me, were you thinking of your slaves when 3^ou cast all in 
the balance, 3^our lives, your fortunes, your sacred honor, in order 
to endure the hardships of the march and the camp, and the peril 
and suffering of the battlefield ? Why, it was but a small minority 
of the men who fought in the Southern armies — hardly one in 
ten — that were financially interested in the institution of slavery. 

There is, however, a court to which this contention may be re- 
ferred for settlement — one whose decision all men ought to accept. 
It is composed of the three men who may be supposed to have 
known, if any men knew, the object for which the war was 
waged, — Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. 
And their decision is unanimous. Mr. Lincoln always declared 
that the object of the war was the restoration of the Union, and 
not the emancipation of the slaves. Mr. Davis as positively de- 
clared that the South was not fighting for slavery, but for inde- 
pendence. And Robert E. Lee expressed his opinion by set- 
ting all his slaves free January 8, 1863 and then going on with the 
war for more than two years longer.* 

*I will only add that if the North waged the war not for the Union but for 
the slave, then it is remarkable that Mr. Lincoln and his advisers never 
found out that fact. And as to the South— if, indeed, she fought not for 
liberty but for her property in slaves — it is still more remarkable that Jeflfer- 



28 

I will not apologize, my comrades, for having taxed your pa- 
tience so long. You will recognize at once the importance and 
the difficulty of the task I set myself to perform, and you 
will not begrudge the consecration of even so long a time as I 
have detained you today, in order that the true story of the course 
pursued by the Southern States should again be set forth. 

^ The generation which participated in that great struggle is 
rapidly passing away, and we believe that no fitting occasion 
should be neglected by those who yet survive, to vindicate the 
motives and to explain the principles of the actors in that great 
drama. Only by iteration and re-iteration by the writers and 
speakers of the South, will the real facts be rescued from oblivion, 

J from misunderstanding, and from misrepresentation, and the con- 
duct and characters of our leaders, and the heroic men who fol- 
lowed them, be understood and honored as they ought to be 
honored by the generation that comes after us. And my friends^ 
the fulfillment of this duty will make for unity and traternity 
among Americans, not for sectionalism. It will strengthen, not 
weaken, the bonds of the Union in the years to come if the gener- 
ations yet unborn are taught to recognize that the principles and 
the aims of the men of the South were as high and as pure as 
those which animated their foemen of the North. Had the men 
of '6i North and South, known each other, and respected each 
^ other, and each other's motives, that terrible Civil War would 
never have been. Let the Union of the future be founded on mu- 
tual respect, and to this end let the truth concerning the princi- 
ples and acts of the old South be told — the whole truth and noth- 
ing but the truth — " nothing extenuated nor aught set down in 
malice." 

Comrades and fellow-citizens, we thank God that to-day the sun 
shines upon a truly re-united countr}'. Sectionalism is dead and 
buried. In the providence of God the Spanish war has drawn North 
and South together in bonds of genuine brotherhood. Their blood 
has watered the same soil ; the common patriotism has glorified 
again the land of Washington. Men who iaced one another in 
deadly conflict at Shiloh and Gettysburg rushed side by side under 
the Stars and Stripes up the the heights of San Juan and El Caney. 
There was no North or South on those fields of battle, or in San- 
' tiago Harbor, or in front of Manila. Yes, and as was well said by 
our own Hilary Herbert at the Peace Jubilee, " Out of the grave 
of sectionalism arose the triumphant spirit of Americanism." 
Men of the South, we have part in that spirit of Americanism. 
It is our heritage as well as theirs. 

son Davis should have embarked on the enterprise of secession, believing 
that he would as a consequence lose his slaves, for in February, i86f , he wrote 
to his wife in these words, "In any case our slave property will eventually 
, be lost ; " and that General Lee should have emancipated every one of 
his slaves more than two years before the close of the war. Thus 
the political head of the Confederacy entered on the war foreseeing 
the eventual loss of his slaves, and the military head of the Confederacy 
actually set his slaves free before the war was half over ; yet both, they say, 
were fighting for slavery ! 



29 

For one moment let us turn from the sacred past — from the 
memories of this day and hour — and look into the future. And 
what is it that we behold ? Surely a Pisgah prospect of beauty 
and hope ! A great destiny opens before America. Great are 
her privileges, her opportunities, her responsibilities. The God 
of Nations has given her possibilities of power and usefulness 
among the peoples of the globe that are almost boundless. 
He has great things for this nation to do. He has given her a 
great part to play in the spreading of civilization and liberty and 
religion throughout the world. Blind indeed will the people be if 
they do not see it so — faithless if they do not grasp it ! But I 
want to say that we of the South claim our part in this great 
destiny of America. Eagerly and joyfully we accept our share in 
the responsibilities, in the opportunities, in the strenuous conflicts, 
in the conquests, in the glory, of the future of our country. To 
that future we turn our faces. To its duties, to its labors, to its 
battles we consecrate ourselves, our strength and our manhood. We 
are Americans, and nothing that pertains to the honor, to the 
welfare, to the glory of America is, or shall be, foreign to us. 

But this occasion belongs not to the future, but to the past. I^et 
our closing thoughts then be dedicated to the memory of our 
dead — that mighty host of brave soldiers and sailors who fell un- 
der the banner of the lost cause forty years ago. The Greek ora- 
tor, whose words I have chosen as a motto for my address, speak- 
ing of the Athenians, exclaims, " Is there a poet or an orator who 
will not do his utmost, by his eloquence and his knowledge, to im- 
mortalize such heroic valor and virtue ? " Such is my feeling as 
I think of those now silent battalions of Southern soldiers that 
sleep on so many hard- fought fields. But where is the poet or the 
orator who can fitly eulogize them ? The pen of a Tnucydides, 
the tongue of a Pericles or a Demosthenes, the harp of a Homer, 
were needed justly to tell the epic story of that great struggle in 
which the best and bravest sons of our Southland freely laid down 
their lives ; a struggle so gigantic in its proportions that the Siege 
of Troy — the famous battles of the long Peloponnesian War — even 
the great engagements of Marathon and I^euctra, of Salamis and 
Chaeronea — sink into insignificance in the comparison. 

I will not attempt then to pronounce a fitting panegyric upon 
those brave men, nor upon their splendid leaders : captains whose 
valor, whose prowess, whose skill, whose heroic constancy were 
never outshone on any field, in any age, by any leaders of men ; 
not by Agamamnon " King of Men ; " not by Achilles, the 
" swift footed," "the invincible" ; not by Ulysses " the wise " ; 
nor by Ajax, "the mighty" ; not by Miltiades at Marathon ; nor 
by Leonidas himself at Thermopylae ; nor by any of the long line 
of illustrious heroes and patriots who, in ancient and in modern 
times, have shed lustre on manhood by their valor or by 
their constancy. Comrades, it is my conviction that the Muse 
of History will write the names of some of our Southern heroes 
as high on her great Roll of Honor as those of any leaders of men 
in any era. Fame herself will rise from her throne to place the 
laurel with her own hands upon the immortal brows of Robert 



30 

E. Lee, and Albert Sidney Johnston, and Stonewall Jackson. 
I grant, indeed, that it is not for us who were their companions 
and fellow soldiers to ask the world to accept our estimate of their 
rightful place in history. We are partial, we are biased in our 
judgments, men will say. Be it so. We are content to await the 
calm verdict of the future historian, when with philosophic im- 
partiality, the characters and achievements and motives of our il- 
lustrious leaders shall have been weighed in the balances of Truth. 
What that verdict will be is foreshadowed, we believe, b)^ the 
judgment expressed by General Lord Woolse)^ who said, " I be- 
lieve General Lee will be regarded not onlj'- as the most promi- 
nent figure of the Confederac\^ but as the great American of the 
19th Century, whose statue is well worthy to stand on an equal 
pedestal with that of Washington, and whose memory is equally 
worthy to be enshrined in the hearts of all his countrymen." 
What that verdict will be was in fact declared by Freeman him- 
self when he said that our Lee was worthy to stand wath Wash- 
ington beside Alfred the Great in the world's temple of Fame. 

What you ask of me, however, comrades, in these closing mo- 
ments, is quite apart from the task of the historian or the orator. 
It is simply to give honest utterance to the love and admiration 
that glow in the breast of every one of us for those our compau- 
ions-in-arms who fell on the almost countless bloody fields of that 
Titanic struggle in repelling the invaders from our soil. All 
honor to their memory ! We cannot call their names. They are 
too numerous to be told over, even if we had here the muster rolls of 
all the Confederate armies. But if their names could be called, 
we could answer as was answered for that famous hero, La Tour 
d'Auvergne, the "first Grenadier of France" — whose name, though 
he was no more, was .still borne on the muster roll of his regiment — 
" Dead on the field of honor !" Only two months ago the urn con- 
taining the heart of that illustrious soldier was removed to Paris to 
rest under the dome of the Hotel des Invalides, and while the order 
rang out " An Drapeau'' arms were presented and the Captain of 
the Forty-sixth Regiment, in accordance with the old tradition, 
called out the name, " La Tour d'Auvergne !" After a second or 
two of silence the answer came back in clear and ringing tones, 
" Dead on the field of honor." Comrades, we make that answer 
to-day, forty years after the end of the war, and our children and 
children's children in generations to come will repeat it, as the 
names of our veterans shall be railed, "Dead on the field of 
honor !" Yes, for these men to whom we pay the tribute of our 
homage were heroes, if ever heroes were. What hardships did 
they not uncomplainingly endure, on the march, in the bivouac, 
in the trenches ! What sacrifices did they not cheerfully make 
for a cause dearer than life itself! What dangers did they not 
face with unquailing front ! Who that ever saw them can forget 
those hardy battalions that followed Stonewall Jackson in his 
weird marches in the great Valley Campaign? Rusty and ragged 
were their uniforms, but bright were their muskets and their bayo- 
nets, and they moved like the very whirlwind of war ! 

They fill, most of them, nameless graves. They were private 



31 

soldiers, v Fame does not, and will not, herald their names and 
deeds to posterity. They fought without reward and they died 
without distinction. It was enough for them to hear the voice of 
duty and to follow it, though it led them by a rugged path to a 
bloody grave. " Tell ray father I tried to do my duty," was the 
last message of many a dying soldier boy to his comrades on the 
field of battle. Oh ! it is for this we honor and revere their 
nameless memories to-day. They were not soldiers of fortune, 
but soldiers of duty, who dared all that men can dare, and en- 
dured all that men can endure, in obedience to what they believed 
the sacred call of country. If ever men lived of whom it could be 
truly said their hearts echoed the sentiment, '' Duke et decorum 
est pro patria viori,'" these were the men. They loved their State; 
they loved their homes and their firesides. They were no poli- 
ticians. They knew little of the warring theories of Constitu- 
tional interpretation. But one thing they knew — armed legions 
were marching upon their homes, and it was their duty to hurl 
them back at any cost. For this, not we only, who shared their 
perils and hardships, do them honor — not the Southern people 
only — but all brave men everywhere. Nameless they may be, 
but the name of "Confederate soldier" will echo around the 
world through the coming years and will be accepted as the syno- 
nym of valor, of constancy, and of loyalty to the sternest call of 
duty. 

My Comrades, I have been in the Eternal City, surrounded by the 
deathless relics and monuments which commemorate the glorious 
achievementsof the citizens and soldiers of ancient Rome. I have 
paced the aisles of that stately church in which Venice has piled 
up the splendid memorials in brass and in marble of the men who 
made her name great in Europe — who made her to sit as a queen 
upon her watery throne among the nations. I have stood under 
the dome of the Hotel des Invalides, in Paris, on the spot upon 
which France has lavished with unstinted hand her wealth and 
her art to shed glory upon the name to her greatest soldier — his 
sarcophagus reposes upon a pavement of costly marbles gathered 
from all quarters of the globe, and so arranged as to represent a 
Sun of Glory irradiating the name of the hero of Marengo, and of 
the Pyramids, of Jena and of Austerlitz. And I have meditated 
in awe-struck silence beneath the fretted roof of Westminster 
Abbey, surrounded by the almost countless memorial marbles 
which twenty generations of Englishmen have erected to celebrate 
the fame of their most illustrious kings and nobles, soldiers and 
patriots, jurists and statesmen, poets and historians, musicians 
and dramatists. 

But on none of these occasions have I been so impressed wit 
the patriotic and unselfish devotion that human nature is capable 
of, as when I have contemplated the character and the career of 
the private soldiers of the Confederacy. Not for fame or for 
rewarJ, not for place or rank, not lured by ambition, or goaded 
by necessity, but in simple obedience to duty, as they understood 
it, these men suflfered all, sacrificed all, dared all — and died ! No 
stately Abbey will ever cover their remains. Their dust will 



32 

■never repose beneath fretted or frescoed roof. No costly bronze 
will ever blazon their names for posterity to honor — but the Poto- 
mac and the Rappahannock, the James and the Chickahominy, the 
Cumberland and the Tennessee, the Mississippi and the Rio 
-Grande, as they run their long race from the Mountains to the Sea, 
will sing of their prowess forevermore ! The mountains of Vir- 
ginia and Tennessee and Georgia will stand eternal witnesses of 
their valor, though no Thorwaldsen chisel on their solid rocks 
a Lion like that at Lucerne, stricken to the death, but even in 
<ieath, and as its life blood ebbs away, protecting the Shield com- 
mitted to its defense. 

As I recall the magnificent valor of those half-fed, half-clad 
legions of the Confederacy, the thought comes: "But after all 
they failed. The Confederacy fell. The banner of the Southern 
cross sank to earth to rise no more. All the courage and the 
constancy of those heroic souls could not, or, at any rate, did not, 
bring success. Their cause is known to-day as ' The Lost Cause.' ' ' 
Yes, as we remember the superb but fruitless prowess they dis- 
played on so many fields, the words of the poet recur to our 
minds : 

" In vain, alas ! in vain ye gallant few, 
From rank to rank your volleyed thunders flew." 

But was it in vain ? I do not believe it. It is true that their 
flashing bayonets did not establish the new Confederacy. It is 
true that those proud armies of Lee and Johnston were slowly 
worn away by attrition until, reduced to gaunt skeletons of what 
they had been, they surrendered to the vast hosts of the Union 
armies. But it is not true that those gallant Southrons suffered 
and died in vain. No brave battle fought for truth and right was 
ever in vain ! The truth survives, though the soldier of the truth 
perishes. His death, his defeat, becomes the seed of future 
success. Over his dead body th^ armies of the truth march to 
victory. I might say that to have given, amid disaster and 
•defeat, such splendid examples of what American manhood can 
accomplish was enough to prove that they did not shed their 
blood to no purpose. ' ' Being dead they yet speak. ' ' They tell us 
and our children and children's children that courage, self-sacri- 
fice, loyalty to conviction is sublime ; it is better than mere suc- 
•cess ; it carries with it its own reward. Death was not too high 
a price to pay for the exhibition to the world of such heroism as 
theirs. That cannot die. It shines as the stars with a deathless 
light above the sordid and selfish aims of men. It will inspire 
generations to come with noble ideals of unselfish living. It is a 
new example of the profound words of Jesus : " He that loseth his 
life shall find it.' ' 

It is said that on the spot where the three devoted patriots of 
the three Swiss Cantons met, by the borders of Lake Lucerne and 
bound themselves in a solemn league to rid Switzerland of the 
tyrant's yoke, three fountains afterwards sprang up. The legend 
embodies an eternal truth. The soil trodden by a patriot is holy 
ground, and though his banner may go down in disaster, and he 
himself perish, and his cause be overwhelmed by defeat, yet his 



33 

memorj' and his example will remain a benediction to his peo- 
ple. Fountains of blessing spring up on the sod consecrated 
•by the patriots' sufferings and sacrifices for his country. 

Let us note, then, wherein they failed and wherein did not fail. 
They failed to establish the Southern Confederacy, Why ? For 
no other reason but this — God decreed otherwise. Yes, my com- 
rades, the military genius of our commanders was not at fault, the 
valor of the Confederate armies was not at fault ; but it was God's 
will that this country should not be divided into two rival nations 
jealous of each other ; armed against each other. It may be said 
they failed to preserve the institution of slavery. I answer again 
they did not draw their swords to defend slavery. It was the 
cause of Liberty that fired their souls to do, to dare and to die. 
They conceived that the Federal Government was trampling on 
the liberties of the States, and they rose in their defense. It 
was the sacred heritage of Anglo-Saxon freedom, of local self- 
government won by Runnymede, that they believed in peril 
when they flew to arms as one man from the Potomac to the Rio 
Grande. They may have been right, or they may have been 
wrong, but that was the issue they made. On that they stood. 
For that they died. 

That, be it remembered, was the supreme issue in the mind of 
the Southern soldier. The dissolution of the Union was not what 
he had chiefly at heart. The establishment of the Southern Con- 
federacy was not tvhat he had chiefly at heart. Both the one and 
the other were secondary to the preservation of the supreme and. 
sacred rig-lit of self-government. They were means to the end, not 
the e7id itself. 

Did they fail then in this, their supreme and ultimate aim ? I 
answer, they did not fail to make such a protest against the 
aggressions of power upon the province of liberty as has filled 
the world with its echo. They did not fail in successfully 
arraigning b)^ the potent voice of their superb valor and their 
all-sacrificing patriotism the usurpation of powers and functions 
which, by the Constitution, were distributed to the States. 

It is my belief that the close and candid student of public 
opinion in our country, these forty years past, will conclude that 
this protest of theirs has not been in vain. In spite of the his- 
torians who have misread the causes and the objects of the war 
on the part of the South, the fact that the Confederate soldiers 
and the people of the South made their superb struggle and their 
marvellous sacrifices for the right of local self-government has 
silently impressed the minds of the American people, with the 
result that that right has been steadily gaining in the strength 
of its hold upon the people of many of the States of the Union.* 

* Members of Congress from the South observe a great change in this 
respect in the sentiments of their fellow members from the North and the 
West. Moreover, -the limitation of the authority of the General Government 
to those powers distinctly delegated and the reservation to the States of 
the powers not delegated has been affirmed again and again by the Supreme 
■Court since the war. 



34 

So convinced am I of this, that I make bold to predict that 
the future historian will say that while the armies of the North 
saved the Union from dissolution, the armies of the South saved 
the rights of the States within the Union. Thus victor and 
vanquished will both be adjudged victorious, for if it is due 
to the Federal soldier that the Union is henceforth indissoluble, 
it is equally due to the Confederate soldier that this indissoluble 
Union is composed, and shall forever be composed, of indestruc- 
tible States. 

Comrades, when I consider these things I no longer echo, as I 
once did, the sentiment which Lucan puts into the mouth of a 
great Roman : 

" Vidrix causa diis placiiit^ 
sed victa Catoni," * 

for I see that the "conquered right " has won the victory after all ; 
the conquered banner triumphs in defeat ; the Lost Cause is lost 
no longer, and God, who denied us success in the way of our own 
choosing, has granted it in another and better way. 

Yes, ye gallant defenders of our stainless Confederate banner, 
ye did not die in vain ! Your deeds have cast a halo of glory over 
our Southern land which will only grow brighter as time ad- 
vances. Your memory will be a priceless heritage which we will 
transmit to our children's children untarnished. None shall ever 
write "traitor" over your graves unrebuked by us, while God 
gives us the power of speech ! Farewell, brave comrades, fare- 
well, till the tryst of God beyond the river. The bugle has sounded 
' ' taps ' ' over your graves. After all these years its pathetic notes 
still vibrate in our ears, reminding us that we shall see your faces 
no more on earth. . 

But we clasp your dear memory to our hearts to-day once more. 
Ye are " our dead ; " ours ye were in those stern years from 1861 
to 1865, when we marched and camped and battled side by side ; 
" ours " by the sac;-ed bond of a common consecration to a cause 
which was holy to us ; ye are " ours " to-day as we recall with 
pride your cheerful endurance of unaccustomed hardships— your 
heroic steadfastness in danger and disaster, your magnificent 
courage in the deadly trenches, or at the flaming cannon's mouth. 

Ye were "our dead " when ye lay stark and stiff on the bloody 
fields of Manassas, of Winchester, of Shiloh, of Perryville, of 
Chickamauga, of Fredericksburg, of Malvern Hill, of Chancel- 
lorsville, of Sharpsburg, of Gettysburg, of the Wilderness ! Ye 
will be "ours" again when the last great Reveille shall sound, 
and the brothers whom the fortunes of battle divided shall be 
reunited in the better land ! 

♦Rendered by Dr. R. A. Washburn thus : 
" Let a conquering might 
Bribe all the gods to silence, — 
Cato's choice be with the conquered right ! " 



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